Profile

I always try to make the most of living in London, so I go see shows as often as I can. I love musicals, theatre, concerts, comedy shows… everything! When I want to relax I pick up my crocheting. At the moment I am making a wolf teddy, but my favourite thing to make is dinosaurs. I do cheerleading with the University team- we go compete against other Universities. Before I started cheerleading I did gymnastics, and I am a qualified gymnastics teacher.

Whenever I go back to Leeds I love to go for big walks- something I miss in London. I really like walking in forests or around lakes.

Quantum physics is the physics of really really small things, like atoms, electrons- and my favourite- particles of light (these are called photons). In my research these photons are how the computer stores information. This is like how a regular computer stores information in “bits”- in quantum computing we instead use “qubits”. Right now we don’t have very big or powerful quantum computers. Instead, we have small quantum devices which can do some tasks really well but there is a lot they can’t do. I’m trying to make these small quantum devices work better by getting rid of any errors in them. The more errors we have, the worse the quantum device works and then there isn’t any point in using a quantum device instead of a regular one.

Some days I spend time in group meetings, where people in my research group share ideas and help each other. It is always really useful to get other people’s opinions on my work. I also do some work for other groups on campus- I am involved in a group which connects women PhD students on campus and we are currently organising a start of the year event. I’m also a member of the optical society, which invites speakers to talk about different things they do with light. Finally, I am a postgraduate physics rep, which means that people can come to me if they have any problems in the department or want something to change.